Chapter 7: Police Station
During his early morning class, he was mostly just listening to background noise. As I listened to the professor, all the sentences blurred together until there was only a buzzing sound.
Lin Yan propped himself up on the table, his head nodding off repeatedly.
"The shirts of the Ming Dynasty were made of jade-colored cloth and silk. The shirts were wide-sleeved and had circular collars, with black ribbons hanging down. Even prisoners wore this style of clothing."
At midnight, the city was asleep, and no activity was visible. The night breeze blew the hair on Lin Yan's forehead as he drove from the residential area to the main road.
A person appeared silently in the middle of the road.
Lin Yan gasped. Being too close to swerving out of the way, he subconsciously slammed on the brakes, "Squeak--"
He rushed forward because of the huge inertia. He prayed that he wouldn't get into an accident. When he looked up again, he saw the front of the car stopped less than two meters away from the person, yet the person stood perfectly still as though he hadn't seen the car. There is no intention of moving out of the way at all. Was this guy trying to kill himself? Lin Yan grabbed his chest with his hand. To signal the person to move aside, he flashed the car lights twice. After seeing the person clearly, Lin Yan’s mind turned to static.
The man’s feet were reversed, with heels facing forward and toes facing backward.
Slowly, he raised his head towards Lin Yan. He had a skull covered with chunks of flesh and bones peeking through. The lips on his face were more than half-rotten, and two rows of slanted white teeth were visible. There was a stiff, crooked grin that pulled at the corners of his mouth, and dark laughter sounded in Lin Yan’s ears…
Lin Yan’s body trembled and he was thrown back awake.
"Skirts were lighter in color in the early Ming Dynasty, and white skirts were popular during the Chongzhen period. There were one or two inches of embroidery around the hem of the skirts…."
"By the end of the Ming Dynasty, it was eight or ten inches. Pleated skirts were very popular, with fine and large folds."
It was midday, and these were human voices.
….Was that a nightmare?
Lin Yan recovered from his mini heart attack and tried to slow his breathing, but his heart kept beating.
Hesitantly, a cold hand touched his hair lightly. The sensation stopped on the back of his neck as if it were soothing, but then it vanished. Lin Yan froze. Anger and the constant fear of being violated at any time would make anyone paranoid. His temper reached a breaking point; encounters with ghosts at night, dreams of ghosts during the day, would it ever stop? By waving his hand, he tossed the textbook to the side, slashed the table, and screamed, "Fucking try it again! Come at me, I’m not afraid!"
The book fluttered across the table and chairs in the front row, and the papers in the book scattered like snow. Lin Yan stood in a daze for a moment before he snapped out of it. Looking around, his confusion melted into overwhelming embarrassment. He saw the hundreds of students in the classroom turned back and stared at him. The teacher that taught his Ming Dynasty costume research class stood on the podium at the front of the room and looked at Lin Yan with disgust.
"Sit down. If you have any questions, you can talk to me after class. This teacher is old and can’t keep up with your young people’s games."
Rustling whispers in the class became roaring laughter. Lin Yan blushed and shuffled to the front to retrieve the textbook. He bowed to his teacher and returned to his seat.
For most of the night, he was terrified that the ghost would try something else. Just as dawn broke, he was struggling to keep his eyes open. Despite having a hard time staying awake in his morning class, he didn't expect that his half-asleep daze would cause him this much embarrassment.
His face was still burning.
In the midst of thinking about it, his phone screen suddenly turned on, and a text message appeared. Yin Zhou sent: "Was everything alright last night?"
Lin Yan settled down and quickly sent a reply: "I’m still alive. I should be fine before July 15th." Fingers snapped and moved across the keyboard: "I found something new on a supernatural forum. Meet me at the entrance of the cafeteria at noon so we can talk."
On the first day of the month of Wushen, the fifteenth day of the seventh month was the day of the Ghost Festival, and the gate of ghosts was open wide.
Lin Yan shook his head and laid on the table, scribbling on a notebook as he thought. Unconsciously, he had smeared the rebirth curse over an entire piece of paper. He hadn’t done anything, so why is this ghost doing all of this? Lin Yan poked the paper bitterly with his pen, making small holes.
After his two classes, Lin Yan hurried to the cafeteria for lunch after picking up his things haphazardly. As he turned to the left, he roughly bumped into another person. His nose slammed into their forehead so hard that he almost cried out loud.
It would have been a good idea for him to check his horoscope before going outside today.
Lin Yan held his nose and hissed and sucked in cold air. The other man stood silently. Lin Yan was surprised to see that he had run into a Daoist priest when he opened his eyes and looked at the person he hit.
He was short and thin, his skin pale and he appeared weak. He was wearing some weird Tibetan blue homemade clothes. His shoulders were hunched under the weight of his backpack. This person seemed so dull that people couldn’t help but groan just glancing at him.
"Sorry, I was rushing to the cafeteria and didn’t see you," Lin Yan apologized embarrassedly. He didn't seem to be listening to him at all. His gaze was fixed on something over Lin Yan’s shoulder. He stared at it and suddenly grinned.
"Such powerful Yin energy. You need to be careful."
After speaking, he let out a soft "ah" as if he had just woken up from sleepwalking, and lightly floated past Lin Yan.
Is that guy rambling delusions again?" The boy following Lin Yan poked his arm and said in disbelief."
Lin Yan shook his head and rushed down the stairs with his bag.
It was lightly raining, and the whole campus was wet. From a distance, the students holding umbrellas over their heads looked like large, colorful mushrooms. Lin Yan stepped onto a small paved road to avoid stepping in a puddle.
Looking around he saw Yin Zhou, who was looking around like a stupid bird at the entrance of the cafeteria. He looked terrible. He held a large red umbrella, four characters seemingly hanging on his forehead, advertising his current mood: Stay away from me.
People passing by couldn't help but glance at him.
With two quick leaps, Lin Yan went over the water accumulating under the steps, and patted Yin Zhou on the shoulder: "Why do you look as bad as I do?"
Yin Zhou was a little out of it and took a long time to look at Lin Yan: "Second Immortal Gu is dead."
"My mother just called and asked us to go to the police station."
Lin Yan’s face dropped.
After the police officer on duty led Lin Yan and Yin Zhou to the morgue and removed the white cloth covering Second Immortal Gu's face, Lin Yan took two steps backward in shock. Yin Zhou couldn’t stop gagging. The features were severely distorted. Almost all of her eyeballs were hanging out of her eye sockets thanks to the cracks in her eyes. Her mouth was wide open, and her face looked like it was smeared with nail scratches.
It seemed that she had witnessed something extremely terrifying before she died. The most disgusting thing was that her skin from her face to her neck was covered with deep holes. Her body had been eaten by insects and ants. Only from the contours of her face could they recognize her as the grandmother who pretended to be a ghost in front of them yesterday.
Lin Yan covered his mouth and tried to resist the urge to vomit. He waved his hand vigorously to let the police know to put down the white sheet.
"This is the person?"
Lin Yan nodded and took a few steps back unconsciously.
She died last night. The bug bites are still under investigation. The policeman said casually and glanced at Lin Yan’s expressions disdainfully: "Are you two okay? We are all used to seeing dead people. It’s better to think about where they’re going."
Lin Yan and Yin Zhou, the last two customers of Second Immortal Gu, were asked to remain at the police station to assist in the investigation. Interrogators took them to record their statements and fill out forms. With the folders in hand, the police officer shuttled between the two interrogation rooms. As he walked, he muttered: "College students still believe this. I’ve heard so many crazy things over the years."
At 3 pm, the hospital sent the autopsy report to the police station. Second Immortal Gu died of a heart attack, which was a natural death. The blood contains a large number of catecholamines, damaged myocardial cells, mixed with erythema; this was a common cause of death among patients with cardiovascular diseases. There were many insects in the countryside, and they gnawed away at the corpse overnight.
After leaving the room of interrogation, Lin Yan and Yin Zhou left their fingerprints for the file, concluding the case. The two were sent out by the policeman on duty. After seeing that the superior was nowhere to be found, they muttered to Lin Yan: "The report stated that they were strongly affected. Quite simply, they were terrified of ghosts and gods. When I was a child, the villagers told me that these types of people never died peacefully and that ghosts and gods would destroy their morality and consume their lives until they died."
After leaving the police station, the rain was still pattering, and there were few people on the street. Lin Yan’s face turned blue and he couldn’t stop shaking from head to toe. When he passed by the convenience store, he bought a pack of cigarettes and sat side by side with Yin Zhou on the road. The body of Second Immortal Gu lingered before his eyes. Lin Yan wiped the rain off his face, his lips shaking as he asked, "Do you think… that thing did it?"
Yin Zhou was silent. "He came again last night and he seemed very angry." Lin Yan buried his face in his hands. "We shouldn’t have gone to see her yesterday."
"You saw how she looked just now. That thing isn’t human."
As he raised his head and looked around, his voice suddenly rose: "It thinks that because no one can see it, it can simply kill anyone it wants? That’s a human being; a living, breathing person. Despite everything I do, you always fuck up and leave no matter what I say. You’re coming after me and yet you take revenge on others?!"
Insane, perverted, totally unreasonable. Lin Yan said mutely, "Ghosts were once human as well. What conscience did you even have when you were alive?! Why don't you come out? I am waiting for your death and I would appreciate your coming across. Why are you waiting for July 15th? Let's stop this once and for all!"
In all the towns and villages, the faces behind every window have remained unknown to the general population. The village in the northwest corner of the city was unaware that a grandmother's life was robbed. She died for no apparent reason. The incident was as unnoticeable to many as stepping on an ant. The ghost did it! What kind of person would believe that? Lin Yan recalled his experience last night. He thought that gentle kiss would in some way indicate that the monster still had some trace of his conscience from his day as a human being. Even sympathized with his paranoia, but now? Second Immortal Gu did not see his existence at all, what went wrong? Lin Yan cried out with his whole heart, what have I done wrong!
"The next one could be me, my parents, or you…" Lin Yan squeezed the cigarette out; a vicious expression appeared in his eyes: "I wanted to make peace with it, but now I changed my mind."
"He can come and try to kill me. It's a life for a life; I'll kill him first?"
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